[JackSpratts]

Sneaky Sharing

Despite well-publicized wins by piracy foes, illegal digital music and movie trading continues to flourish in underground havens.
Michael Desmond

Where has all the good illegal peer-to-peer action gone? Underground. In some cases, waaaaay underground. Fearful of reprisals from the major entertainment companies and worried about virus-laden, corrupted, or spoofed files, many users are shying away from the big-name file-sharing networks like Kazaa and WinMX, and have gone straight, buying their music and video from legal sources. That's a win for Hollywood.

But it is also clear that large numbers of music and video pirates are simply looking elsewhere for their booty and have turned to lesser-known P-to-P networks, Usenet, and even invitation-only networks.

"Users are very much moving around...rather than moving out," says Eric Garland, the CEO of BigChampagne, a market research firm specializing in P-to-P activity.

To combat the new threats, Hollywood has turned to old standbys: new legislation, more lawsuits, and improved copy-control technology.

Once boasting over 30 million users, Kazaa is now down to about 16 million, according to research firm ComScore Media Metrix. WinMX users have dropped from a high of 6.8 million down to 6 million this May, the firm says. If you looked just at these results, it would appear that entertainment companies are winning the war. But these statistics show only a partial picture of the piracy problem.

Still Trading

Have users really reformed? Not really: Many are flocking to smaller P-to-P networks like BitTorrent, EDonkey, and EMule. According to ComScore, BitTorrent nearly doubled in users, from about 200,000 to more than 400,000 between November 2003 and May 2004; EMule grew from under 100,000 users in February 2003 to nearly 300,000 a year later. EDonkey, which ComScore did not track in its survey, has made even bigger gains, says Garland.

Their usage numbers may not be on the same scale as the old Napster's, but these services may pose a greater threat to content owners than previous P-to-P networks. All three use an advanced technique called swarming, in which portions of files are downloaded from multiple sources and immediately offered to the network. The result: potentially faster downloads and more rapid propagation of content.

And there are other options for pirated content.

Internet newsgroups, best known by the collective name Usenet, offer a vast reservoir of music, movies, and software, at connection speeds that can put the better-known P-to-P services to shame.

In the past, the difficulty of using newsgroups, combined with limits ISPs place on file transfers, has stunted the growth of piracy on them. That could change, particularly with the emergence of user-friendly software--such as the freely available Xnews reader--that makes accessing content in newsgroups easier than dealing with the more unpredictable P-to-P services.

But even if newsgroups become a more popular venue for illegal file trading, they are generally still public and therefore trackable. Private networks set up by file traders are harder to track or quantify.

"John," an IT manager for a financial services firm in the Midwest, says that he and his friends have traded files over an encrypted virtual private network they set up expressly for that purpose. And more and more music and video is being traded face-to-face.

"If it's music, it's almost always sneakernet," John says. "It's just so much easier to hand someone a USB drive and say, 'Bring it back to me next week.' It's easy to trade someone 20 gigs of music for 20 gigs of music."

Going Straight or Dropping Out?

The good news for Hollywood is that the piracy crackdown in the last two years has persuaded substantial numbers of people to go legit. A Pew Internet Project report reveals an increase in those who say they download music files, from 18 million in December 2003 to 23 million in February 2004--17 percent of whom use legal services like ITunes or Musicmatch. And ComScore data shows that the six largest online music shopping services drew more than 11 million visits from U.S. users in March alone.

That's as it should be, says Marc Morgenstern, vice president and general manager of Loudeye's Digital Media Asset Protection Business. The company sells online-content-protection services to the music, movie, game, and software industries. Its Overpeer service line is responsible for some of the decoy files masquerading as copyrighted content on P-to-P networks. The aim: to make file sharing so inconvenient that consumers will pay for a more predictable and satisfying experience.

"[The file-sharing community is] starting to notice. If you go on bulletin boards, you will see that people are getting frustrated by this activity," says Morgenstern.

But while file-sharing old-timers may be frustrated, Hollywood's aggressive antipiracy campaigns may also be scaring off potential customers for legal download services.

The Pew study shows that the Recording Industry Association of America's legal actions are discouraging potential first-time users of legit services. About 60 percent of those who have never tried downloading don't want to go to any source of downloaded music--legal or not--for fear of lawsuits, the study says.

The much-publicized antipiracy lawsuits aren't the only reason users might be confused as they consider buying digital tunes. It can be hard to tell the good guys from the bad. Some legitimate music services such as Great Britain's Wippit use the same basic peer-to-peer technology that powers pirate havens like Kazaa, while the Russia-based Allofmp3.com, for example, has a download music store with appealingly low prices--but its licenses are based on Russian copyright laws, so its content may be illegal for users outside of that country.

Upping the Ante

Despite an overall drop in P-to-P activity, the RIAA, the Motion Picture Association of America, and the BSA continue to publish apocalyptic estimates of revenue lost to online and offline piracy. The BSA, for instance, maintains that in 2003 nearly $29 billion worth of pirated software was installed on PCs worldwide. The music industry primarily blames file sharing and music piracy for drops in U.S. sales, from a peak of $14.6 billion in 2000 to $11.9 billion in 2003. What's more, as worldwide broadband adoption continues to grow--especially in Asia--these groups expect the problem to worsen.

Widely available broadband has enabled pirates to expand beyond music to other kinds of digital media. "Accesses for movies and games are increasing dramatically," says Morgenstern. "As soon as a game or movie is released, there is a race out there to get it onto peer-to-peer."

How are antipiracy groups responding? For one thing, they're pushing for more targeted legislation to strictly limit behaviors and technologies that can encourage copyright infringement, points out BigChampagne's Garland.

A flurry of such bills is advancing through Congress, including the Inducing Infringement of Copyright Act (S 2560), which would effectively criminalize P-to-P networks that encourage trading of copyrighted material (see "Top Legislative Billing" for details on this and other bills).

The legislative effort won't end the cat-and-mouse game, says Morgenstern, because some of these P-to-P software vendors, such as EDonkey, are offshore. And with Gnutella, a popular open-source P-to-P program, "there is no there, there," he says--it's a super-distributed network. "This is a gnarly, worldwide problem. Peer-to-peer networks are not going to go away."

So in addition to new laws, entertainment and computer companies are bringing new technologies to the content-protection table. One of the more notable is in Microsoft's upcoming Windows Media Digital Rights Management 10 software, formerly code-named Janus. Though it's meant to facilitate the secure downloading of content from subscription services to portable players, its mission could expand. Janus includes a protected, real-time clock in digital media that permits playback only after verifying that a license is valid. Microsoft has a bevy of partners; expect compatible devices and digital media offerings this year.

Microsoft's software could also work with another DRM scheme called Advanced Access Content System. AACS is intended for use with next- generation optical discs, such as Blu-ray and HD-DVDs. It's in the development stage and should work with other existing DRM technology; it may also let users copy a disc onto a compliant movie server in their home or onto select portable devices. AACS has backing from Disney and Warner Brothers, as well as from several major computer firms like IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Sony, among others.

TiVo's upcoming digital broadcast security technology, recently blessed by the Federal Communications Commission, permits some sharing of DTV broadcast content over the Internet. It allows a TiVo user to send recorded free, over-the-air DTV programs via the Net to other TiVo boxes or PCs registered to that user.

File sharing is here to stay, and the new DRM technologies do acknowledge that and plan for it. Whether they will give users enough rights to make illegal sharing no more than a blip in the digital media market remains to be seen.

Software on the Sly

Hollywood is not alone in feeling the pinch of online pirates. The software industry also faces a significant and growing threat from pirates who spam users relentlessly, marketing cheap, bare-bones copies of popular software such as major products from Adobe, Intuit, and Microsoft.

The e-mail originates largely from Eastern Europe, says John Wolfe, the Business Software Association's manager of investigations. While the spam often describes these copies as being for personal "backup" purposes, Wolfe emphasizes that the practice clearly violates copyright law: The sites make no effort to verify that buyers already have a license for the software, and many offer cracks that let buyers avoid the software's copy protection.

Most such sites have sprung up in the last 12 months, according to industry investigations. And though illegal software sales are difficult to track, Sean Myers, manager of Internet antipiracy at the Software Information and Industry Association, says that, based on his observations, sales of sham backup copies have tripled in the past year.

The BSA and similar groups have a very limited ability to confront offshore pirates. So as with P-to-P file sharing, scrutiny could fall on those who buy the illegal copies of applications.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,117637,00.asp


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Philly Considers Wireless Internet for All
David B. Caruso

PHILADELPHIA - Forget finding an Internet cafe. For less than what it costs to build a small library, city officials believe they can turn all 135 square miles of Philadelphia into the world's largest wireless Internet hot spot.

The ambitious plan, now under discussion, would involve placing thousands of small transmitters around the city — probably atop lampposts. Each of these wireless hot spots would be capable of communicating with the Wi-Fi network cards that now come standard with many computers.

Once complete, the $10 million network would deliver broadband Internet almost anywhere radio waves can travel — including poor neighborhoods where high-speed Internet access is now rare.

The city would likely offer the service either for free, or at costs far lower than the $35 to $60 a month charged for broadband delivered over telephone and cable TV lines, said the city's chief information officer, Dianah Neff.

"If you're out on your front porch with a laptop, you could dial in, register at no charge, and be able to access a high speed connection," Neff said. "It's a technology whose time is here."

If the plan becomes a reality, Philadelphia would leap to the forefront of a growing number of cities already offering or mulling a wireless broadband network for their residents, workers and guests.

Chaska, Minn., a suburb of Minneapolis, began offering citywide wireless Internet access this year for $16 a month. The signal covers about 13 square miles.

Cleveland has added some 4,000 wireless transmitters in its University Circle, Midtown and lakefront districts. The service is free for anyone who passes through those areas.

Some 1,016 people were logged in to the system at 2:20 Tuesday afternoon, said Lev Gonick, chief information officer at Case Western Reserve University, which is spearheading the project and paying for a chunk of it.

"We like to say it should be like the air you breathe — free and available everywhere," Gonick said. "We look at this like PBS or NPR. It should be a public resource."

But free citywide Internet access would appear to pose a competitive threat to businesses such as local phone carrier Verizon Communications Inc. and cable provider Comcast Corp. Both companies have invested heavily in upgrading their networks to provide high-speed Internet connections for a monthly fee.

A free service might also hurt Verizon's wireless business, which is spending $1 billion to upgrade its network with a technology that will enable speedier Web access for laptops and mobile phones.

John Yunker, an analyst with Byte Level Research, said those companies could face a serious challenge if cheap, or free, Wi-Fi proliferates.

"When you see initiatives like Philadelphia's, you are conditioning people to expect free or very low cost Internet service. And that is going to be a problem for providers who have built a business model around charging a fee," he said.

While business users might be willing to pay extra for reliability or national coverage, a free service might prove more than adequate for more recreational Web use, Yunker said.

As it stands, a typical Wi-Fi transmitter like those used in homes, coffee bars and airports is at least several times faster than the broadband connection provided by high- speed cable or DSL over a phone line.

And thanks to surging demand, the cost of those hot spots and Wi-Fi computer cards has fallen sharply in recent years. At the same time, a glut of capacity on wired networks built during the technology boom has made it cheaper to deliver Web traffic to and from Wi-Fi hot spots.

Neff, for example, estimated it would cost Philadelphia just $1.5 million a year to maintain the system.

The main drawback to Wi-Fi is that the signal can only travel several hundred feet. But the "wireless mesh" technology being considered by Philadelphia and other cities essentially joins those individual hot spots into a network to provide service across entire neighborhoods.

Philadelphia Mayor John F. Street, a technology buff who carries a wireless handheld computer everywhere he goes, appointed a 14-member committee last week to work out the specifics of his city's plan, including any fees, or restrictions on its use.

Elsewhere, New York City officials are negotiating to sell six companies space for wireless transmitters on 18,000 lampposts for as much as $21.6 million annually.

Corpus Christi, Texas, has been experimenting with a system covering 20 square miles that would be used (for now) only by government employees.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...ireless_cities



Computer on Board, and It's Not a Laptop
Jeanette Borzo

AFTER driving around here in the land of eternal traffic, the minivan was pulling into a cafe parking lot when a pleasant British voice said, "You have new e-mail."

The voice came from the Dodge Caravan's radio, but was generated by CarBot, a Windows XP computer underneath the passenger seat. About the size of a three-inch stack of typing paper, the device sensed the cafe's wireless network and immediately checked for new messages. On the dashboard-mounted touch screen, a push of the Play button produced a reading of the new e-mail, a test message sent that morning with text from "Macbeth."

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow," the voice said.

Indeed, after a string of attempts to integrate a fully functioning PC into the car, tomorrow may finally be near.

The idea has been around the block more than once. In the late 1990's, for example, the Clarion Corporation of America released the AutoPC, based on specially designed software from Microsoft.

"A lot of things that were launched didn't work out," said Mark Dixon Bünger, a senior analyst who covers automotive technology for Forrester Research in San Francisco.

Damien Stolarz, the 30-year-old founder and chief executive of CarBot, says today's market is different. After all, the use of MP3 music files had not yet exploded in the late 1990's, DVD's had just come on the market and wireless networks were not common, he said.

That has changed, providing potential new uses and functions for a car computer. Moreover, navigation systems and other computer-based technologies are finding a place in the car.

About three-quarters of consumers are interested in receiving information on weather, directions, traffic or road conditions in their cars, according to Forrester Research, while about a quarter of consumers are interested in MP3 tunes and e-mail in the car. The Telematics Research Group, in Minnetonka, Minn., predicts that in-car DVD entertainment systems will grow from 8.4 million units installed worldwide this year to 21.9 million units by 2010.

"We live in a connected world, and we want that connection extended to the vehicle," says Phil Magney, the research group's president and co-founder. Manufacturers, he predicts, will eventually sell cars with built-in PC's.

In the meantime, products like CarBot can transform an existing car, handling functions like navigation, e-mail and entertainment.

"If the car has speakers and a radio, CarBot will work in it," Mr. Stolarz said. Running off the car battery and linked to the sound system, CarBot is usually installed in the trunk much like an aftermarket stereo amplifier.

Typical PC's, of course, do not have to take into account bumpy roads, extreme heat or car-battery power. So while most car computers are built around standard Windows PC's, all have been modified for car travel.

Some, like the car PC's from Xenarc Technologies of Santa Ana, Calif., are best for hobbyists who want to put together their own systems. Others, like those from LXE of Atlanta, are engineered for the rough conditions found in, say, a construction crane and so cost thousands of dollars more than other car PC's.

Several, like those from Right Connection Electronics of Yorba Linda, Calif., and Hybrid Mobile Technologies of West Palm Beach, Fla., are more like CarBot but don't include software that reads you your e-mail.

Mr. Stolarz declined to say how many CarBots have been sold, at $1,450 each, since they went on sale this year on the company's Web site (www.carbotpc.com) and through other distributors. But they are made in lots of 50, he said, and the company sold enough in August that it nearly broke even.

For the demonstration drive, Mr. Stolarz chose some of his 2-year-old daughter's favorite DVD's to view on a screen in the back seat.

CarBot doesn't have a built-in DVD drive, but Mr. Stolarz attached one to a U.S.B. hub he connected to the CarBot with a U.S.B. cable.

Using the seven-inch-wide touch screen (a $420 option) mounted on the dash, he compressed the DVD's and loaded them onto the computer's hard drive; then, with Windows Media Player software, he set up a succession of video files to play.

The system was originally designed for use with no screen at all, but simply with a remote control. Kalani Patterson, an acquaintance of Mr. Stolarz's who has been testing the device since last month, uses it to download his e-mail messages wirelessly from his home computer to the CarBot while in his driveway before commuting to his job at a Hollywood advertising agency, BLT and Associates.

Even more than e-mail, what Mr. Patterson likes is having his entire MP3 collection on hand. "It's pretty slick," he said, but cautioned that CarBot "is an early- generation product."

For tracking the car's location, CarBot also includes a Global Positioning System receiver that continually updates the car's longitude and latitude. For connecting to the Internet or other computers, the wireless network technology Wi-Fi is built in.

To read e-mail, CarBot uses a woman's voice from Elan Sayso, software from the Acapela Group. It is pleasantly jarring to hear e-mail messages that sound like a BBC broadcast, but as with much text-to-voice software, Sayso is not flawless.

"The text-to-voice software is kind of funny sometimes, with its mispronunciation," Mr. Patterson said, adding that CarBot can have trouble with technical jargon. But, he said, CarBot does best with "the person-to-person communications that are the most important e-mails for you to get on a timely basis."

Mr. Stolarz says his small company, based in the Canoga Park section of Los Angeles, is continually upgrading the software's vocabulary and sending updates to customers.

Later, Mr. Stolarz plans to integrate, in order of importance, a DVD player, satellite radio, navigation software, and pause, record and advertisement-skipping features for the radio, much like those in the TiVo digital video recorder.

"Someone has to take the responsibility to move this market beyond the hobbyist," he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/te...ts/09carb.html


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Samsung Cell Phones to Get Tiny Hard Drive
AP

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has announced the world's first mobile phone to sport a tiny hard drive. With the built-in 1-inch, 1.5- gigabyte hard disk, the SPH-V5400 could store about 15 times more data than conventional handsets -- everything from digital music files and photos to video, Samsung said.

The phone is equipped with a mega-pixel camera, camcorder, MP3 player, a high-resolution 2.2-inch display, a microphone and dual speakers. It will be available in South Korea later this month. Samsung did not disclose a price or any plans to sell it in the United States or elsewhere.

Hard drives are becoming an increasingly popular component in consumer electronics to accommodate the need for more digital data storage, and makers of the mini drives have worked to squeeze more and more capacity out of the coin-sized disks.

Seagate Technologies LLC has a 1-inch drive that holds 5 gigabytes of data, while Toshiba Corp. has developed an even tinier drive -- at 0.85 inches in diameter -- to store 2 to 3 gigabytes of data.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/tech...rd-Drives.html


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Semiconductors Offer a New Way to Cut the Cord
Anne Eisenberg

WHAT a liberating feeling it is to cut the cord and go wireless, taking a suddenly untethered laptop, for example, and heading for the couch or porch swing to work on the Internet.

But most of the cables snaking through home computers and entertainment centers are not so easily severed - they are essential for high-speed transfers of data from devices like camcorders, cameras, and MP3 players.

That is going to change, though, as electronic devices start to come equipped with a short-range, high-speed wireless radio technology known as ultrawideband. Long in use in military, security and radar applications, the technology is being adapted for consumer electronics because it offers rapid, cable-free transfer of large digital files.

Freescale Semiconductor of Austin, Tex., is one of the companies that have developed semiconductor-based ultrawideband technology. A former subsidiary of Motorola, the company recently demonstrated its chips in a device that transmitted data wirelessly at 110 megabits per second at a range of 30 feet while using little power.

Martin Rofheart, director of ultrawideband operations for the company, said 110 megabits per second is about 100 times the speed of Bluetooth, and at least double the typical rate using the wireless networking standard known as Wi-Fi.

The marked increase in speed of ultrawideband opens the way to many cable-free applications, he said. In the future, for instance, people may stop at a convenience store kiosk and download a DVD onto their keychain computer storage device in only a few minutes.

"You will start seeing applications for living rooms and entertainment centers with our chips late this year and at the beginning of next year," Dr. Rofheart said. Semiconductor-based ultrawideband transceivers from Freescale will provide 220 megabits per second by the end of the year, he said.

The first wave of devices will connect televisions to video sources for wireless displays, Dr. Rofheart said. Wireless connectivity for downloading and uploading MP3 contents will follow. "We expect to demonstrate hand-held connectivity applications with telephones and music players at the end of 2004," he said.

While the technology offers dazzling speeds, many hurdles remain before it is likely to become widespread beyond the living rooms and offices of early adopters.

For example, many international regulatory problems remain to be solved. The Federal Communications Commission has approved ultrawideband use in the United States, but few other places except Singapore allow it, partly from concerns that it may conflict with other wireless devices that operate in the same spectrum. "We have to work with various country agencies to get the regulations passed," said Stephen Wood, ultrawideband technology strategist for Intel in Hillsboro, Ore. "That will take a year or two."

And there are other problems closer to home. Within the industry, manufacturers and vendors have so far failed to agree to a single standard that would make all ultrawideband devices compatible, so that, for instance, a DVD player bought from one company would automatically communicate by ultrawideband with a TV bought from another.

Instead, many of the companies have divided into two factions, with Intel, Texas Instruments and many other powerful companies on one side with about 170 members, and Motorola, Freescale and roughly 70 other companies, many of them start-ups, on the other, said Peter Meade, who edits a monthly electronic newsletter, UWB Insider, from Carlsbad, Calif.

The two groups have presented competing versions of ultrawideband technology to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, which traditionally develops standards in the industry. "They are duking it out in the I.E.E.E., trying to determine the official standard," he said. "Regardless, though, we are likely to see applications at the Consumer Electronics Show in January."

Bob Heile of Attleboro, Mass., heads the institute's group on wireless personal area networks, which is overseeing adoption of the industry-wide standard. There are multiple versions of ultrawideband technology, he said, among them the two competing approaches before the committee: multiband and direct sequence.

The multiband system, backed by the Intel faction, "is similar to a frequency hopper approach," Dr. Heile said. "The signal jumps around to different frequencies between 3 and 10 gigahertz." The direct sequence approach, like Wi-Fi, spreads itself across the allocated frequencies in a continuous stream; it is backed by Motorola and its allies.

He said neither version of the technology was demonstrably better. "Each solution has benefits, and each has things it can do better," he said. "It's a question of what compromises you are trying to achieve."

Dr. Heile has suggested trying both approaches. "Let's test them out in the marketplace," he said, "and let the customers decide."

Testing will help European and Asian regulators, too, decide on the preferable version of the technology to adopt, he said. "Right now, non-U.S. countries are nervous about UWB interfering with other uses of the spectrum," he said. But with chips on the market, they can do their own trials to see which are better."

Dr. Heile thinks that the first popular use of ultrawideband will be to connect desktop computer peripherals wirelessly.

Ultrawideband is meant for distances of no more than about 30 feet, he said, making it ideally suited to such uses. "By the time I go across the room," he said, "that 400 megabits per second is down to 50 megabits per second."

Ultrawideband will also speed up transfers at desktops, he said. "I want fast access to the hard drive that is storing my movies and my MP3's," he said, "and I want to get stuff on and off quickly."

Regardless of whether conflicting camps can agree on standards, both groups are moving aggressively to get their solutions to the marketplace, he said. Mr. Wood of Intel agreed. "Despite the battle in the I.E.E.E., the market is going full speed ahead," he said. "We don't anticipate a delay in delivery of products to customers."

But that delivery is not going to come just yet, he added. "It's hovering into view," he said, "but it won't hit the mainstream for about three years."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/te...ts/09next.html


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Your Own Hit Parade on a Hard Drive, With MP3 Files
Yingdan Gu

In the same way that people used to record their favorite songs from the radio on cassettes or their favorite TV shows with VCR's, they can now capture streaming audio from the Internet on a computer hard drive.

A new piece of software called Audio Xtract is the key. After the software is installed on your computer, it connects you to a database of Internet radio stations that can be sorted by genre or bandwidth. Once you've found one that appeals to you, just click on Record. The software enables the computer to record the material in the form of individual MP3 files and stores them in a folder.

The files are named according to their content, making it easy to delete those - like commercials - you don't want.

Because the contents are recorded as MP3 files, they can be played on computers and portable media players and burned onto CD's. Audio Xtract is $50 at www.audioxtract.com and at other Web sites, and has begun to reach stores. A professional version, which includes the ability to edit recorded material, is $70.

Audio Xtract can record as many as eight stations simultaneously, although a broadband Internet connection is recommended when multiple streams are being recorded. And you can even schedule recording sessions in advance.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/te...ts/09reco.html


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Man bites dog

KaZaa Parent BDE Sues RIAA

Action Alleges Abuse of Protected Algorithm by "Spoofers," Names Web Services and Riaa as Defendants
Press Release

Stating its efforts at cooperation have proven fruitless, Brilliant Digital Entertainment (BDE) subsidiary Altnet has filed a civil suit against a number of companies and organizations, including the RIAA, alleging the breach of the "TrueNames" patent it licensed in 2002. The suit names RIAA chief Mitch Bainwol, and the RIAA's Hillary Rosen, Cary Sherman and Marc Morgenstern as defendants, in addition to The RIAA, Overpeer, Inc., Loudeye, Inc., and Media Sentry Inc. Altnet alleges some of the defendants infringe on its patents to "spoof" peer-to-peer (P2P) users with bogus or corrupted media files. Altnet alleges this has inhibited the growth of P2P for legitimate file sharing that benefits copyright holders (which Altnet advocates) and thereby has injured its business.

The suit, while narrowly focused on a specific, patented algorithm that permits the unique naming of files across peer-to-peer networks, has far-ranging implications in the ongoing battle between artists, copyright holders, labels and consumers over their respective rights to share files over the Internet. Recently, the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that certain file sharing networks were not liable for the actions of their users who share files.

"Regrettably, our unique business proposition, backed by our exclusive patent rights, has been rejected continuously over the past three years, forcing us to seek injunctive relief. We've exhausted every means of trying to work with defendants and those they represent to patiently encourage and positively develop the P2P distribution channel," says Altnet CEO Kevin Bermeister. "Ironically, Altnet has built its business to directly address the modern moral dilemma of digital copyright infringement; yet their failure to establish -- or embrace -- legitimate, consistent and competitive business practices, delays the day when we will both see significant revenue from this incredible distribution stream that is already providing substantial benefit to many copyright owners and consumers. In the interim, we cannot stand by and allow them to erode our business opportunity by the wholesale infringement of our rights."

Altnet President Lee Jaffe adds, "Overpeer claims it spoofs up to 200 million files per month. That adds up to a lot of instances of patent violation(1). The defendants have had the opportunity to work closely with us to innovate and improve the overall content experience for file sharers, yet they choose to send users damaged files that erode relationships between artists, bands, and their fans."

Altnet, for its part, has built its business advocating authorized distribution of files over the Internet and stresses its commitment to providing full compensation for copyright holders through advertising, content sales and revenue sharing. The company has successfully distributed video and audio clips from the recent Warped Tour online and has agreements with over seventy independent record labels to assist them in distributing their artists' music over peer-to-peer networks. TrueNames, according to Bermeister, is the most efficient method to identify unique files on distributed networks. "Nothing else is as simple or effective," he says.

Ironically, Overpeer collects -- and sells -- information gathered from consumers' computers. While officially dubbed "data mining," the information gathering practice is more often compared to "adware" or "spyware," which provides clients with information about computer users' web habits -- without informing users the data mining is going on. Others claim this kind of software slows down user computers.

Bermeister concludes, "We're saddened to have had to take this kind of action and are confident we will prevail."
http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/Sep/1071609.htm


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No Fears: Laptop D.J.'s Have a Feast
Jon Pareles

DOWNLOADING music from the Internet is not illegal. Plenty of music available online is not just free but also easily available, legal and — most important — worth hearing.

That fact may come as a surprise after highly publicized lawsuits by the Recording Industry Association of America, representing major labels, against fans using peer-to-peer programs like Grokster and EDonkey to collect music on the Web. But the fine print of those lawsuits makes clear that fans are being sued not for downloading but for unauthorized distribution: leaving music in a shared folder for other peer-to-peer users to take. As copyright holders, the labels have the exclusive legal right to distribute the music recorded for them, even if technology now makes that right nearly impossible to enforce.

Recording companies have tried and failed to shut down decentralized file-sharing networks the way they closed the original Napster. (That name is now being used for a paid-download service.)

Courts have ruled that the services can continue because they are also used to exchange material that does not infringe on recording-company copyrights. At the same time, a bill before Congress, the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004, seeks to restrict the way file-sharing programs are constructed.

While the recording business litigates and lobbies over music being given away online, countless musicians are taking advantage of the Internet to get their music heard. They are betting that if they give away a song or two, they will build audiences, promote live shows and sell more recordings.

As with the rest of the free content on the Internet, there's no guaranteed quality control. Lucas Gonze, whose webjay.org lets music fans post playlists that connect to free music and video, describes free Internet music as "a flea market the size of Valhalla."

The first place to look for free music online is at musicians' own sites. Many performers, from Bob Dylan (www.bobdylan.com) to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (www.yeahyeahyeahs.com), post hard-to-find songs for listening: some as free downloads, some as streaming audio (which can be recorded with a free program like StepVoice at www.stepvoice.com). A next place to look is the labels, particularly independent rock and electronic labels like Matador (www.matadorrecords .com/music/mp3s.html), Vagrant (www.vagrant .com/vagrant/audio/audio.jsp), Barsuk (www.barsuk .com), Saddle Creek (www.saddle- creek.com) or Tigerbeat6 (www.tigerbeat6.com/html/catalogue.htm).

Many public radio stations also maintain music archives for streaming or downloading. Among them are the classical-music station WNYC (www .wnyc.org) and eclectic stations like WFMU in Jersey City (www.wfmu.org) and KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif. (www.kcrw.org), all of which have troves of live performances. MTV (at www.mtv.com) presents an entire album each week as an audio stream.

Following is a selection of sites offering free music online. Most of them are best used with a either a broadband connection or nearly infinite patience. While major-label recordings are largely (but not entirely) off limits, there's more than enough available music to satisfy every listener.

Epitonic

The first and best place to look for any band with an independent recording is www.epitonic.com, a superbly organized site that is likely to have music from nearly everyone heard on college radio. It includes not only downloadable songs but also biographical information and links for hundreds of acts, grouped under genres and subgenres. And it has an invaluable "Similar Artists" feature that can direct fans of one band to dozens of potential new favorites. Within Epitonic's huge roster is at least a song or two from some major-label acts, among them the New York band Secret Machines, the Texas band Sparta and the English bands Radiohead and Spiritualized. But independent bands like Bright Eyes or Godspeed You Black Emperor are every bit as good.

Webjay

At www.webjay.org, music fans share their Web finds with the world. There's no music on the site, just lists of links that allow users either to play entire lists or to download items directly one by one; it also includes links to videos and news sound bites. Webjay is something like the lists submitted by customers at www .amazon.com, but with connections to the music itself. As such, it's only as good as the widely varied skills of its contributors, and its links aren't always dependable. But it is a way for musical obsessives like bigwavedave to share his fondness for garage-rock or for OddioKatya to point listeners toward a wide assortment of Brazilian songs.

Furthurnet

Before the Internet became ubiquitous, the Grateful Dead's fans built up their own network to exchange concert recordings, a network that expanded as other jam bands sprang up. The logical extension of the process is Furthurnet (www.furthurnet .com). It is a peer-to-peer network that trades only recordings of bands that encourage listeners to record concerts: not just the Dead but Phish, Gov't Mule, Dave Matthews Band, Los Lobos, Wilco and David Byrne as well. Users need to install a program available on the Web site. Most of the available concert recordings don't use MP3 files, but a better quality audio format, SHN, which also requires some software installation. It's easy; information on the site explains all the technicalities.

Another connection for jam bands is www.etree.org, which points listeners toward recordings stored online and is equally fastidious about high fidelity. Meanwhile, concert recordings of all sorts, from vintage 1960's bootlegs to music only a few days old, have been traded at www.sharingthegroove.org, although the site is currently undergoing maintenance.

The Library of Congress

Through the years, tax dollars have supported researchers like Alan Lomax on excursions to collect music from every nook and cranny and tradition they could discover across the United States. The Library of Congress has made a considerable amount available free online. A place to start is the American Memory Collection (http://memory .loc.gov/ammem/audio.html), with fiddle tunes, American Indian music, border music from the Rio Grande, Dust Bowl songs and more.

Folkways Records

In 1987, the Smithsonian Institution bought the catalog of Folkways Records, which had set out to document every sound in the world and continues to support projects like a 20-disc collection of Indonesian music. Many of the Folkways recordings can be heard on the Web at www .folkways.si.edu, from "Classical Music of Iran" to "Creole Music of Suriname" to "Music of Indonesia Vol. 1: Songs Before Dawn."

Internet Archive

The Internet Archive (www. .archive.org) has set out to preserve material that might otherwise disappear from the Internet, including Web pages, documents, books and video clips as well as audio, and it includes a Live Music Archive with more than 10,000 concerts via etree.org. Most are from jam bands, but there is plenty to choose from. (More than a million people have downloaded Grateful Dead music from the archive.) The archive also includes an assortment of other audio under All Collections, which has 131 songs from 78-r.p.m. discs, and more than 3,000 songs on what it calls netlabels, most of them releasing electronic music. Try the exotica-tinged selections from Monotonik.

Iuma

The Internet Underground Music Archive (www.iuma.org) was a pioneer of free Internet music. It was founded in 1993 as a place for musicians to post their own music online, and it just keeps on expanding. Unfortunately, it is both overwhelming and overwhelmed; finding a good song requires extraordinary luck, and downloading it will take a while. Like the other send-it-yourself sites noted here, Iuma can make a user appreciate what record company scouts do.

Garageband

Hopefuls face Darwinian competition at www.garageband.com, where musicians are encouraged to rate 30 songs before submitting one of their own (or pay a $19.99 fee instead) and other listeners are also assigned tracks to rate. The songs that rise to the top of the charts have a chance to be heard on Garageband's radio outlets or collected on its compilation albums. Garageband demands original songs, not cover versions, and its top-rated ones tend to sound more professional, if not always more distinctive, than those at other mass upload sites.

CNet

The computer experts at CNet include an extensive selection of music among their software downloads at http://music.download.com. A vast bulk of the music is submitted by musicians themselves, so there are a lot of derivative sounds to wade through, but the well-organized site also includes worthwhile bands as Editor's Picks, currently including Dios and Ex Models.

Vitaminic

A huge site based in England, www.vitaminic.co.uk, offers tens of thousands of aspiring bands and a smattering of better-known acts, although brand-name bands like Franz Ferdinand tend to offer only streaming audio rather than downloads. But the site is well organized and also includes video clips from the likes of Nick Cave.

BeSonic

A European site where musicians can place their songs online, www

.besonic.com has a slightly more international perspective than the other newcomer sites. Rankings and recommendations help visitors sift the material. Registration is required for downloading.

Pure Volume

More than 76,000 songs are available at yet another site for aspiring musicians, www.purevolume.com, which is strongly weighted toward rock. To winnow the site, try the Pure Picks column or look under the category Music for Top Artists (Signed).

DMusic

Musicians can also post their own songs on DMusic (www.dmusic .com). It helps users wade through more than 17,000 acts — an overwhelming majority categorized as alternative or rock — by listing DM Picks and by having users give songs a thumbs-up or thumbs-down and append comments. As with Iuma, most are amateur submissions, with plenty of jokes, but there are some enjoyable tracks scattered among the picks.

Smart-Music

Dance-music experimenters dominate at www.smart-music.net, a selective site that draws its downloadable MP3's from hard-to-find small labels. Dipping into the genres and subgenres of electronica, Smart-Music has about 300 songs available from (relatively) well-known groups like Mouse on Mars and Zero 7 as well as basement laptop obsessives, and a high percentage of them turn out to be worthwhile.

Ragga-Jungle

Slow, deep reggae bass lines are the foundation for whole families of dance music represented at www.ragga-jungle.com. It's an outlet for amateur and professional producers and toasters (rappers), and the downloadable songs, available free after registration, include echoey dub-reggae vamps, sparse dance-hall productions and frenetic jungle tracks. Each track has ratings and comments, and quick streaming allows users to sample tracks before committing to a download. Contender for best title: "A Waste of Half an Hour of My Life, and Four Minutes of Yours" by the Archangel.

Classic Cat

With so much classical music in the public domain, it's a surprise that there aren't more free downloadable sites offering it, although the length of classical compositions can make them inconvenient to download. At www.classiccat.net, it's possible to search by composer, from Monteverdi to Messiaen. The selection is spotty and links don't always work, but it's a start.

Asian Classical

Need some Indonesian gamelan music? On the Internet at www .asianclassicalmp3.org, a dedicated collector of Asian music has transferred recordings from cassettes to downloadable MP3's. The site includes music from nine countries, including 28 minutes of gamelan music from Java.

Iraqi Music

The straightforwardly named www.iraqimusic.com is a resource for both the classical Iraqi improvisations called maqams and more recent Iraqi recordings based on traditional (and thus noncopyrighted) songs. "Sister Sites" provides links to other sites with Middle Eastern music.

Trama

A Brazilian record label, Trama (www.tramavirtual.com), offers about 10,000 MP3's, primarily from local Brazilian bands. The site is in Portuguese and requires users to sign up, but after that, it is fairly easy to navigate. "Baixar" means download.

Micromusic

The Internet is home to countless obsessives. The ones gathered at www.micromusic.net make their electronic music from the sounds of the first primitive video games. Proud of what they can generate from eight-bit gizmos, they have placed hundreds of blipping, buzzing ditties online, garnering the attention of Malcolm McLaren, the Sex Pistols' manager, among others. Registration is required, but it's a modest inconvenience on the way to tunes like "How Bleep Is My Love."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/10/ar...ic/10INTE.html


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6.63 Gigabits per Second

Internet2 Sets New Data Speed Record

The next generation Internet2 network has once again broken a data transmission speed record, according to PhysOrg. Scientists transferred 859 gigabytes of data in less than 17 minutes at a rate of 6.63 gigabits per second between Geneva, Switzerland, and Caltech in Pasadena, California (15,766 kilometers or 9796 miles). It is the first record to break the 100 petabit meter per second mark (one petabit is 1,000,000,000,000,000 bits).
http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/53515


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Universities Combat File-Swapping Music Theft
Rodney Ho

But illegal downloading is still growing. An average of 8.2 million people were online at any one time in July using illegal file sharing sites, up 26 percent from 6.5 million in June 2003. Eric Garland, BigChampagne CEO, said on- campus use is just a drop in the massive Internet bucket. "A lot of students live off campus," he noted. "And many universities don't want to play Big Brother."

University computer services, in concert with the struggling music industry, are finding creative ways to reduce the flood of illegal downloading on their computer networks.

Despite the rise of legal music download sites such as iTunes and Walmart.com, unlawful peer-to-peer file sharing is alive and well, and college students are common culprits.

Officials at many schools are sending warning e-mails and discouraging freshmen at orientations from file swapping. Many are also using quiet, backdoor technical means to do the same.

'Inconvenient and Annoying'

Emory University in Atlanta has been especially aggressive, blocking access to known peer-to-peer software trading Web sites such as Grokster, Kazaa , iMesh and eDonkey.

"We've had very good success with this technology so far," said Doris Kirby, Emory director of information technology policy and legal compliance.

"It [stinks]," said Luke Anderson, a 19-year-old sophomore from Phoenix. Anderson said he prefers to buy CDs, but has illegally downloaded more than 400 songs, mostly rock.

Some students are less critical. "It's kind of inconvenient and annoying," said Steven Lee, a 19-year-old sophomore from the Washington area who admits he had been downloading movies rather than music lately.

Lawsuits and Clogged Servers

Nationally, the Recording Industry Association of America has sued more than 4,000 people for illegal downloading, including students. And a committee of educators and entertainment companies released a report to Congress last month outlining how schools are limiting illegal file sharing and partnering with legitimate music services.

Universities initially ignored the problem until student file sharing began eating up huge chunks of their computer networks and slowing them down. The recording association has seen a "sea change" in attitude the past two years, said its president, Cary Sherman.

"The most important thing is that universities send the right message to students, so they can establish attitudes and practices they will carry with them for the rest of their lives," Sherman said.

File Swapping Thrives

But illegal downloading is still growing. Atlanta-based BigChampagne marketing research firm said an average of 8.2 million people were online at any one time in July using illegal file sharing sites, up 26 percent from 6.5 million in June 2003.

Eric Garland, BigChampagne CEO, said on-campus use is just a drop in the massive Internet bucket. "A lot of students live off campus," he noted. "And many universities don't want to play Big Brother. It places them in a very awkward position."

Georgia Tech, for instance, doesn't block Web sites. "We do not monitor how people use the Web," said Tech spokesman Bob Harty.

The university will investigate if someone complains about overzealous downloading, which has happened 15 to 20 times in five years, he said. And when the recording association requests IP addresses (the numerical identifier of a computer on a network) of alleged offenders, "we will cooperate with them." That has happened, Harty estimates, five to 10 times.

Limiting Bandwidth

The University of Georgia limits bandwidth -- the amount of data that can be transmitted over a network at any given time -- of certain types of files used to send music and video across the systems.

"We do not manage content -- we manage bandwidth," said Bert DeSimone, the UGA communications director for technology services. "It seems to be a fair way to handle it."

Spelman College's tech department doesn't specifically prohibit access to sites, but uses "packet shapers" to slow downloading and uploading at these sites.

Jin Zhang, director of Spelman's network system services, said it could take five to eight hours to download one song from an illegal site compared with a minute or two from unrestricted locations.

Kennesaw State University skirts bandwidth problems by having an outside Internet service provider take care of its new dorms. Keep it Legal One way to beat the students is to join them, some schools have discovered.

Nationally, several universities have provided legitimate access to a huge library of songs to listen to, with extra charges for downloading. For instance, the legal music site Napster, which offers a monthly subscription model and 99-cent downloads, works with schools such as Cornell University, University of Miami, Vanderbilt University and Pennsylvania State University. Kirby said Emory is considering a similar service.

Matthew Asher -- a 20-year-old Emory junior who used to download songs illegally off iMesh but says he stopped last year to set a good example as a student adviser -- pointed out an alternative.

Through iTunes, for instance, he can stream songs off other networked computers in his dorm. "You can't download for free, but you can listen to songs all you want," he said, noting that one student has about 10,000 songs he could peruse. He even found a tune by an obscure Italian rapper he likes, Piotta.
http://www.macnewsworld.com/story/Un...eft-36511.html


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'F' Is for File Sharing

Area Colleges Strive to Curtail Illegal Downloads
David McGuire

It's move-in day for freshmen at the University of Maryland's College Park campus and the narrow lawn outside Denton Hall is strewn with piles of suitcases, bedding and Dell computer boxes. If recent history is any guide, the smiling teens wandering amid the makeshift encampments are primed to join the next generation of hard-core music pirates who'll raid Internet file-swapping networks for hundreds of thousands of illegally copied songs over the next four years.

Jason, an incoming physics major guarding a pile of boxes, summed up the sentiment that terrifies record company executives: "I'll end up downloading something at some point, I'm not going to let them say, 'Oh, we're going to get mad at you a little bit' [and] deter me from what I want to do."

The university environment has proved to be something of a "perfect storm" for encouraging illegal downloading. Teenagers arrive on campuses already armed with powerful computers and are greeted with free high-speed Internet connections, unprecedented privacy and scads of free time. A college student built the original Napster in the late 1990s to swap songs with his buddies, and universities have been hotbeds of downloading activity ever since.

The recording industry has watched disc sales fall from a high of $13.2 billion in 2000 to $11.2 billion in 2003, a period that also witnessed the exponential growth of "peer to peer" song swapping, known in online shorthand as "P2P." Although it's difficult to measure college students' precise contribution to that phenomenon, experts say they are some of the most active illegal downloaders. Companies that monitor file-swapping activity see predictable spikes in file-swapping activity when college students go back to campus, and troughs when they go home for vacation.

"I know when it's spring break without looking at the calendar," said Mark Ishikawa, the chief executive of Los Gatos, Calif.-based BayTSP, which monitors peer-to-peer networks on behalf of entertainment and software companies. Ishikawa said he tracked about 140,000 electronic infringements a week against one of his movie studio clients at the beginning of August but by the end of the month -- as students began to move back in -- that number rose to nearly 190,000 infringements a week. Ishikawa wouldn't name the studio but said he sees similar trends for all his clients.

In 2003, the recording industry stepped up its crackdown against illegal song-swappers, suing thousands of people and issuing warnings to thousands more. Officials at Washington-area schools have responded by boosting efforts to quash the practice, which eats up their electronic resources and lately has forced them to handle a glut of cease-and-desist letters from entertainment-industry lawyers.

At schools throughout the region, administrators have stepped up their efforts to educate students, stiffened penalties for copyright violations, installed technology to restrict abnormal Internet traffic and in one high-profile case, given students a legal way to download their favorite songs.

Lots of Letters and a Skit

Although schools have differing strategies for tackling electronic piracy, the unifying factor among those efforts is increased education.

Some schools may be moving more slowly toward changing their disciplinary codes or buying the slickest new technology to "shape" the bandwidth that students use, but "virtually every university has been pro-active -- at least about educating students," Recording Industry Association of America President Cary Sherman said.

Every incoming Maryland freshman got a bright-yellow letter from the provost warning against file-swapping, tucked into the "Get Connected" pamphlet that tells them how to set up their Internet connections. Georgetown and George Mason universities sent out similar warnings to all of their students.

Georgetown, George Washington University and the University of Virginia have set up special Web sites to advise students of the law and their responsibilities online. Johns Hopkins won't let students onto its network until they agree to a written policy banning illegal downloading.

The hallowed freshman orientation has also been pressed into the service of the copyright wars at many schools. In addition to running incoming students through the usual gantlet of campus tours and mixers, this year "we read them the file-sharing riot act," said Carl Whitman, executive director of e-operation at American University.

To bolster its orientation offering, Catholic University has commissioned a video that General Counsel Craig Parker said would be an "MTV-ish" admonition against file swapping. Parker said Catholic plans to make the video available to other schools once it's completed.

Maryland has gone a step further and arranged for its student welcoming committee to put on a cautionary skit about file swapping for newcomers. In the performance -- repeated for several different groups of incoming freshmen -- Lisa, a virtuous dorm dweller, hectors her ne'er-do-well peers, Chris and Kelaine, to leave off their file-swapping ways.

"Oh, that is just fantastic. You know you guys could get in serious trouble for this. You're downloading who knows what and hosting a black market," she says after discovering her friends' digital treachery. "What do you think this network is? Your own playground?"

Alas, Chris and Kelaine are implacable in their lawlessness. The skit ends with Chris and Kelaine about to be cuffed and hauled off by campus authorities.

Lindsey, another Denton Hall newbie, said it's hard for her to tell how many people actually get caught for file swapping so the skit didn't really scare her. She conceded, however, that it "kinda puts the idea in your head." Lindsey, Jason and the other students named in this story asked that they not be identified by last name.

Sherman said that jibes with the recording industry's take on such efforts. "Education alone, while important, is not effective in changing behavior," he said.

More Than a Slap on the Wrist

For students who don't get the message burned into their retinas by a series of letters, Web sites and one-act plays, many schools have begun to formalize punishments for downloading songs illegally over their networks.

The most common way that students are discovered trading files at Maryland is when the school receives a "takedown" notice from an entertainment company. A 1998 federal law allowed copyright owners to demand that network operators remove any infringing material they may be unwittingly hosting. Universities must comply with the takedown notices or risk running afoul of the law themselves.

In 2003, Maryland received more than 900 of the notices, and other schools report being deluged with similarly large volumes. Whitman said American University officials went through stretches in 2003 when they received more than 30 notices every day.

The notices don't identify students by name, but rather by the unique Internet protocol (IP) number issued to each student by the school.

When Maryland receives one of the notices, its information technology office immediately orders the student to remove the offending material from his or her computer. If the student doesn't comply within 24 hours, the office kills the student's connection until the infringing copies are purged, said Amy Ginther, director of the university's NEThics project.

The office doesn't punt first offenders to the campus judicial system, but does warn them about the risks of file swapping. Ginther said officials advise students that the same entertainment company that sent the takedown notice could just as easily have sued them. She said they also tell students that the typical settlement for such a lawsuit is around $3,000.

Two-time offenders earn a trip to the residence hall judicial office and a new "judicial record," which acts as a kind of probation notice, said Chris Taylor, who runs the office. The judicial record compounds the punishment for any other violation of campus rules, Taylor said. No student at Maryland has ever committed a third offense, but third offenders would lose their network connections for at least some length of time, and could lose their residence hall berths altogether, Taylor said.

Other schools have a similarly tiered punishment system. At the University of Virginia second offenders must pay a $100 reconnection fee before they can get back online. Such deterrents are apparently having the desired effect. Since Virginia installed the tiered system last year, "only one person committed a second offense and nobody committed a third offense," said Shirley Payne, the school's director for security coordination and policy.

Look Out Honey, Cause I'm Using Technology

Colleges can automate their network policing activities to some extent with technological tools that allow them to "shape" the usage of their bandwidth.

Bandwidth-shaping technology provided by companies like Packeteer, LogicSense and Sandvine Inc. allows university network operators to limit the amount of network capacity any one student can use, and to de-prioritize certain suspicious types of network traffic.

Controlling how much bandwidth a single student can devour is as much about preserving resources for the schools as it is about complying with copyright law, officials said. "We did find a couple years ago that the residence halls were just eating up bandwidth," said Anne Agee, the deputy chief information officer at George Mason. Agee's office now monitors residence hall bandwidth consumption for unusual spikes.

George Mason also starts all of its newly connected students in a computer "safe" mode that doesn't allow them to share files. The students can turn that mode off, but Agee said it acts as another barrier to illegal activity.

Whitman said American University invested in rate-limiting technology to ratchet down the amount of file transfers students can initiate, but he also noted that companies like Sharman Networks -- the Vanuatu-based company that owns the Kazaa file-swapping program -- are constantly retooling their technology to trick systems designed to reign it in.

After network operators began blocking a certain outgoing "port" that Kazaa used to transfer files, Sharman issued a new version of Kazaa that would "hop" from one port to another to evade blocking.

Because of the arms-race nature of the battle between file-swapping companies and network police, such technologies "won't block P2P to zero," but do play a role in an overall anti-file-swapping strategy, the RIAA's Sherman said.

The bandwidth-shaping tools may not have reduced P2P activities to "zero" at any area schools, but they have made a fairly profound dent at some schools. After handling "hundreds" of takedown notices in the 2002-2003 school year, James Madison University only received 40 last year after installing bandwidth- controlling software, said Dale Hulvey, the school's assistant vice president for information technology.

Johns Hopkins spokesman Glen Small said that school only gets two or three takedown notices a semester since it began more aggressively managing its network.

If You Can't Beat Them ...

Easily the splashiest move made so far to curb illegal song swapping in the region has been GWU's announcement that it would give all of its students free subscriptions to the retooled Napster, which now offers legal, licensed songs as an industry-approved download service.

"This issue just kind of grew," said Alexa Kim, GWU's director of student and academic support services. "There was a point in time when Kazaa was controllable in that you could sort of bandwidth shape and keep the usage down. That all changed when Kazaa came out with a new version of their software that hopped ports. That started the discussion about ok how do we deal with this?"

The school got its answer when an anonymous donor contributed an undisclosed sum for the school to provide free Napster subscriptions to any students who want them for the 2004-2005 school year.

With the subscription, students can download unlimited tracks from Napster's 700,000-song library. The downloads are "tethered" so students will lose access to them when their subscription runs out and won't be able to transfer them from their computers to portable devices unless they pay 99 cents per song. Still, they give students access to a massive catalog that they can listen to legally in their rooms, Kim said.

The record industry is very keen on converting the legions of hard-core university pirates into hard-core digital-music buyers and has cleared Napster to offer its service to schools at a deeply discounted rate, said Aileen Atkins, Napster's senior vice president of business affairs.

"The university environment is an important one for anyone selling music. [University students] are also some of the biggest participants early on in file sharing. Up to 80 percent of the bandwidth within a university is being taken up by peer to peer," Atkins said.

Napster inked its first university deal with Pennsylvania State University last year and has since locked down eight more, including the one with GWU. Other companies like RealNetworks, Ruckus Network and Cdigix have moved in to compete with Napster, offering similar deals to schools. Although it doesn't offer a subscription service, Apple has also made inroads into universities, convincing 55 schools to offer free downloads of its iTunes software to their students.

American University, George Mason, Virginia and Maryland are all considering arrangements similar to the GWU deal.

Eric Garland is the chief executive of Atlanta-based Big Champagne, which tracks file-swapping activity. While he's not convinced the legal offerings will appeal to students, he says it may be the best chance for schools and officials to change behavior. "I think the strategy is right," Garland said. "I think you have to try to start with that demographic that constitutes the bleeding edge and you have to try to convince them to buy off on something. To the extent you can get people to pay for popular entertainment online, that is the only strategy."

But Colin, an incoming freshman standing on the stone steps leading up to Denton's wide white doors, said he doesn’t have the money to spend on music downloads. He says he buys about one compact disc a week, but downloads songs from "atrocious" bands like Nickelback that only produce "one good song."

"I don’t think it's any different than listening to the radio and making a tape off the radio, [only] it's more convenient, it's a lot easier to do and it's more variety. If there's a song I want to get, I'll go download it," Colin said. "I definitely support the music industry more than it needs to be supported. When you're charging $17 for a CD that has one good track and file sharing is an option, you cannot expect people to pay for that."

But Sheri, sitting a few feet away on a giant Dell box, offers a more optimistic note for the music industry and college officials. She downloaded songs from the original Napster, but gave it up for fear that one of the viruses that lurk on such networks would ravage the computer that she bought with her own money. If Maryland were to offer a legal alternative "I'd definitely consider that," she said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2004Sep9.html


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Pirated Goods Swamp China

Official Crackdown Has Little Effect
Peter S. Goodman

SHANGHAI, Sept. 6 -- China on Monday touted the impact of a recent crackdown on pirated goods, seeking to mollify criticism from the United States that it has done little to curb the brazen and widespread sale of such things as illegally copied Hollywood films, fake auto parts and pharmaceuticals.

At a news conference in Beijing, Zhang Zhigang, a vice minister of commerce, said China seized 2 million compact discs during the first half of the year in raids on 8,000 CD and software dealers around the country, fining violators about $3.6 million.

Meanwhile, in a scene familiar in every Chinese city, sidewalk merchants at one of Shanghai's most prominent intersections openly hawked CDs from artists such as Norah Jones and Bob Dylan for less than $1. A block away, a music and movie shop overflowed with an eclectic collection of pirated goods, including Spider-Man 2, Annie Hall and Winnie the Pooh DVDs and Britney Spears CDs.

The disconnect between the official word from the capital and the actuality of the street highlights the entrenched nature of one of the most nettlesome trade conflicts between Washington and Beijing. Though China is in the midst of one of a series of periodic crackdowns, experts said the continued blatant sales illustrate that the government is more interested in managing the politics of the problem than curbing the reality.

The authorities may be overmatched. In this still nominally Communist country of 1.3 billion people, the concept of private property is neither fully understood nor valued, let alone the abstract notion of intellectual property. Penalties for violations are weak and enforcement is spotty, experts said. Authorities often shield factories from raids, choosing to protect jobs over trademarks.

"It's difficult for the central government to impose its will on every street corner," said William D. Fisher, a lawyer with the Shanghai office of Lovells, an international firm that represents entertainment and video-game companies in patent and piracy disputes. "I've seen these announcements time and time again. It appeases the situation, then the problem emerges again."

Still, some change was evident in Shanghai on Monday. Vendors said police have in recent weeks forced them to move street-side stalls into alleyways. One vendor on Shanxi Road, who as recently as last week had her discs spread out for inspection, was instead approaching passersby with her wares cloaked inside a leather handbag -- a fake Louis Vuitton model.

Even as China's government sought to soothe critics Monday, officials heaped doubt on two prominent complaints from American companies General Motors and Pfizer.

General Motors has accused a Chinese firm, Chery Automobile Co., of copying one of its models, the Chevrolet Spark. Vice Minister Zhang said General Motors had failed to gain trademark protection for the car in China, adding that the case is still being reviewed.

General Motors said it remains confident that its position will be vindicated in ongoing discussions with China's Ministry of Commerce.

Pfizer has protested the Chinese government's July decision to revoke its patent on its popular impotence drug, Viagra. Fake versions of Viagra have been widely available in China ever since the drug's release. The government's decision clears the way for Chinese companies to make the drug legally. Zhang said Pfizer's patent was beset by technical problems.

In recent months, the Bush administration, facing pressure to address the United States' $124 billion trade deficit with China, has accused Beijing of unfair business practices. The United States has claimed that China maintains its currency at an artificially low value to make its exports cheaper while subsidizing major industries. Intellectual property has been a particularly frequent talking point. In visits here, Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans has upbraided Chinese officials for failing to crack down on the trade.

Chinese officials have held their ground on the currency issue while dismissing claims that their country's growing stature in manufacturing has been gained unfairly. But intellectual property has been the lone area in which Beijing has consistently promised to do more. In April, during an official visit to Washington, Vice Premier Wu Yi pledged that the government would undertake stringent efforts to shut down sales of pirated software, movies and brand-name goods.

Since then, several high-profile busts have been trumpeted in the official Chinese press. In early July, authorities in Shanghai shut down a DVD export ring, arresting six people, including two Americans, while seizing more than $83,000 in cash and more than 200,000 DVDs, according to state press accounts.

But intellectual property experts said the recent activities have been more political theater than a genuine shift in market activity in an effort to give the Bush administration something it can use to declare progress in an election year.

Samuel D. Porteous, China country manager for Kroll Risk Consulting, which works for brand-name companies on anti-counterfeiting campaigns, said seizing fake CDs has no impact on the trade and amounts to the cost of doing business for those who lose the discs.

"They have to go much deeper into the problem," Porteous said.

The Motion Picture Association of America estimates that piracy cost its industry some $178 million in lost sales last year. Michael C. Ellis, the association's regional director in Hong Kong, said the problem worsened last year.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2004Sep6.html


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Free drinks

Guardian Seminar On Music File-Sharing

The Guardian is offering 10 free tickets on a first come, first served basis to "The MusicAlly debate: PR and P2P - the perfect anti-piracy pitch" on Monday September 13, 2004 from 6.00pm at the Guardian Newsroom, London, EC1. Sponsored by the Guardian, Guardian Unlimited and the Observer, the panel discussion will hear three top advertising, PR and marketing executives - Tim Duffy, the head of M&C Saatchi, Interbrand boss Jez Frampton and PR man and MediaGuardian.co.uk columnist Mark Borkowski - present their views on how the UK music business can avoid a public relations disaster as it seeks to confront the challenge of unlicensed file sharing.

As British labels gear up to consider suing their own customers, how can the industry succeed in winning over the hearts and minds of today's technology-savvy music fans and get across its point in a fresh, innovative and credible way?

Tickets include free drinks after the event.

For further details go to www.MusicAlly.com and to claim your free place, call MusicAlly on 020 7359 0798 quoting "Guardian offer" or send an email to debate@MusicAlly.com with the words "Guardian offer" in the subject header.
http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/sto...299184,00.html


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Picture Imperfect for Tivo, Netflix
Stefanie Olsen, Dawn Kawamoto

Investors this week jumped on a longstanding rumor that Netflix and TiVo are poised to team up for a movie download service, but licensing and piracy concerns could make such a deal impractical for the immediate future, analysts said.

A report in Newsweek on Monday revived speculation that the digital darlings are close to a partnership that would enable subscribers of TiVo's personal video recorder service to download movies from Netflix via the Internet and watch them on a television. TiVo stock shot up 15 percent on Tuesday and climbed a further 3 percent on Wednesday, while Netflix jumped 7.3 percent and then fell back slightly over the two days of trading.

Both the DVR provider and the online DVD renter denied that a deal is imminent, but the logic of such a pairing seems undeniable. The companies have talked about a distribution partnership before; TiVo Chairman Michael Ramsey is a Netflix board member; and both are looking for ways to bolster pioneering businesses that have come under pressure from bigger rivals.

TiVo spokeswoman Kathryn Kelly confirmed that the companies have talked in the past but said TiVo has nothing to announce at this time. "We don't comment on rumors or speculation," she said. "Such a partnership would be understandable, and while the companies do brainstorm together, no time frame or plans have been set."

Echoed Netflix spokeswoman Lynn Brinton: "We brainstorm with them all the time, and their CEO has been on our board since 2002. There is no relationship at this time, and there is no time line for one."

On the verge
Video-on-demand services have been on the verge of breaking it big for the better part of a decade. But they have yet to make it over the hump, thanks to Hollywood's complex licenses and to technology limitations.

Cable companies now offer pay-per-view programming alongside subscriptions, and a handful of companies such as CinemaNow and Movielink offer films over the Internet via download and streaming. Walt Disney, meanwhile, is testing a new service called MovieBeam that sends digital movie files to a hard drive over unused portions of the TV broadcast spectrum.

Netflix has said it plans to debut an Internet product next year, and TiVo has announced similar features without specifying a time frame. Representatives from TiVo and Netflix in the past have said they didn't expect an Internet service to be material to their revenues.

Although the idea of an Internet video-on-demand service is tantalizing, hammering out the details is a bruising process, industry insiders said.

Before going to market with a video-on-demand product, Netflix and TiVo would need the support of Hollywood movie studios, which hold the keys to all-important distribution licenses. Even if the studios are receptive to such a deal, cooperation won't be forthcoming until TiVo can offer a viable content security system to protect the downloadable films in transit from being pirated--an area where TiVo has clashed with Hollywood in the past.

"It is clearly a positive for both sides. There are a lot of movie companies eager to sniff around that area, and it's not just movies--it's anything that helps consumers get content faster," said Tim Hanlon, senior vice president of emerging contacts for Starcom MediaVest Group. "But the success of this venture revolves around digital rights management."

Building new services is crucial for both TiVo and Netflix as they confront growing competition from deep-pocket rivals.

In recent weeks, both have tested their 52-week share price lows, after investors cooled on the prospects of these innovative companies. Netflix's business is being threatened by larger rivals, including Blockbuster and Wal-Mart Stores, while TiVo, which provides both DVR hardware and service, faces similar challenges from cable companies and a potential loosening of its partnership with DirecTV.

For both, movie downloads would provide a distinguishing feature and reduce the chances of their services being commoditized. The move would also help popularize digital video content, something that has happened for audio but not video. However, any download service would face a number of business and technology hurdles.

Currently, TiVo offers a handful of set-top boxes with Internet connectivity. But next year, the company plans to introduce digital TV boxes that enable people to store and transfer content from a PC hard drive to a TV set. Assuming that the digital rights management system is in place to ensure that content doesn't escape the consumer's ecosystem of secured devices, that system would be a winner, analysts said.

TiVo has developed an internal security technology called TiVoGuard, which it plans to build into software and set-top boxes for release in 2005. Those devices will allow subscribers to record TV programming and then send it to up to nine other TiVo boxes they own, which could be in remote locations, TiVo representatives said.

Earlier this year, the Motion Picture Association of America lobbied federal regulators against approving the use of TiVo's content protection technology with digital television. The FCC ultimately gave TiVo a thumbs up for its sharing system, but movie studios remain skeptical.

The problem, according to Hollywood, is that TiVo's system allows file sharing without enough control over who is allowed access. In order to win licenses for a video-on-demand service, TiVo and Netflix would have to assure piracy-shy movie studios that their content protection system is as bulletproof as possible.

"The digital rights management issue is definitely tricky--the studios are wary of anything that allows the transfer of their content," said Aditya Kishore, an analyst at research firm The Yankee Group.

TiVo's Kelly said that because the Federal Communications Commission has approved the technology, the system is secure for use in any movie download service.

"If a TiVo-Netflix deal came to fruition, the content protection technology would be TiVoGuard," Kelly said.

In an interview in February with CNET News.com, Amir Majidimehr, the vice president of Microsoft's Windows Digital Media division, said the software giant has held talks with Netflix, among other companies, to license Microsoft's content protection technology for secure movie downloads.

Licensing hurdles
While content security is a crucial piece of the pie, relationships are everything in Hollywood, and negotiating licensing contracts with the studios can take years.

For example, Starz Encore Group, which only recently introduced a subscription service for online film downloads, said it took more than four years of talks with the studios to expand its film rights to the Internet.

And budding Internet service Akimbo Systems, which has had to delay plans to introduce a video download service from this summer to October, is still in negotiations with studios for first-run films. Akimbo founder Steve Shannon attributed the delay to the complexities of securing contracts, encoding video and labeling content properly.

Representatives of Sony said that to their knowledge, no talks were going on between its Sony Pictures Digital studio and Netflix or TiVo. A representative of NBC Universal, a part-owner of Universal Studios, said it has no Internet download deal with Netflix or TiVo. Calls to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Paramount Pictures were not immediately returned.

The studios may be reluctant to grant Netflix rights for digital downloads. The movie rental company already has contracts to deliver DVDs to subscribers' homes via the postal service. The studios end up taking in between 70 percent and 80 percent of the revenue in that DVD home rental market. But they only receive between 50 percent and 60 percent of the pay-per-view market, the sector that includes digitally delivered films.

But the studios are not totally gun-shy. They have a Web site joint venture called Movielink, which allows users to download movies and watch them on their PC, laptop or TV. They have also granted rights to rival download services Starz Encore and CinemaNow.

"Some of the water has already been tested," a source close to Netflix and TiVo executives said. "But all the rights issues are not completely clear yet."

Also, the market they're targeting is still relatively small. TiVo reported 1.9 million subscribers in its second quarter, and many of those came from DirecTV, which would likely be unwilling to cannibalize its own movie-on-demand efforts. Netflix had just more than 2 million subscribers as of June 30, according to its latest earnings report.

Cable companies have also made a big push to offer video on demand and currently offer it to about 14.6 million consumers, according to Kagan Research.

Release schedules
Netflix and TiVo could also run into trouble over release timing with a download service, according to one potential rival.

Bob Greene, senior vice president of advanced services for Starz Encore, said his company secured exclusive rights for a subscription movie download service when it launched Starz Ticket with permission from studios such as Sony, Universal and Disney. The service, available online through partner RealNetworks, allows people to watch up to 150 movies a month for $12.95 as many times as they want via electronic download.

The Starz Ticket service licenses films for screening in the window set up for subscription or pay TV showings, which is timed to follow the home video and pay-per-view movie releases.

Greene said HBO and Showtime could negotiate with studio partners to get the same rights for online delivery that they have for the pay-TV window. But under Starz's studio partnerships, Starz Ticket is the sole licensee for the Internet. "We would vigorously defend our rights up to and including litigation," Greene said.

In translation, that likely means that Netflix and TiVo would be relegated to rights in the pay-per-view market, which cable and satellite services dominate today.

CinemaNow, Movielink and others have licenses to release movies in the so-called pay-per-view window, which DirectTV and on-demand television services hold rights to as well. The pay-per-view window follows release into the home video market, which Blockbuster dominates, but it precedes the subscription pay-TV services of HBO, Showtime and Starz Encore.

Curt Marvis, CEO of CinemaNow, said he is working with the studios to try to secure rights to earlier release windows, to make the service more enticing.

Given the complexities of the industry, he said, rumors of an imminent Netflix tie-up with TiVo are likely overblown: "As with all these sorts of things, the devil's in the details."
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5357336.html


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EFF on Copyright Bill Moving in Congress
ByteEnable

The Washington Post reports that the House Judiciary Committee has marked up and reported H.R. 4077, the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act (PDEA). The measure is now ready for a vote by the entire House of Representatives. The Senate has taken no action on any companion bill.

The PDEA would impose criminal penalties on those who share more than 1,000 infringing files on a peer-to-peer network. Recent surveys by Ruckus Network show that the average college student who uses P2P file-sharing software shares 1,100 files. The bill would also have the Department of Justice foot the bill for sending warning notices to 10,000 filesharers.

"Tens of millions of Americans continue to use P2P networks," said Fred von Lohmann, senior intellectual property attorney at EFF. "Turning college kids into criminals is not going to change that reality, any more than the 4,000 lawsuits against file-sharing music fans has. This is a business problem, not a FBI problem."

EFF has proposed a collective licensing solution that offers an alternative to criminalizing the behavior of millions of Americans.
http://www.linuxelectrons.com/articl...40908225317178


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SK Telecom Previews File Sharing For 3G Phones

App lets users swap files by creating a p-to-p network among SK Telecom's subscribers
Sumner Lemon

BUSAN, SOUTH KOREA -- South Korean mobile operator SK Telecom Co. Ltd. previewed a file-sharing application for cell phones this week that will let users swap files, including ring tones, music and videos over its 3G (third-generation) network.

The file-sharing application, which is under development, was demonstrated at the company's booth at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Telecom Asia 2004 conference and exhibition in Busan, South Korea.

The application will create a peer-to- peer network among SK Telecom's subscribers, allowing them to freely swap files such as pictures, ring tones, music or video files, said Lee Jou Young, a developer at IXO Logic Co. Ltd., one of two companies developing the application for SK Telecom.

Users will also be able to access files stored on PCs, he said.

At present, the application doesn't include any functions that are designed to protect against copyright infringement or to manage a subscriber's right to use copyrighted material, Lee said.

"We're not thinking about that type of problem," he said.

In addition to file sharing, IXO Logic is also developing a mobile blogging service for SK Telecom users, Lee said. Blogs, or Weblogs, are online journals that can be used for a variety of applications, such as for reporting news or sharing photos with friends.

SK Telecom's mobile blogging application is being designed as a personal tool to help subscribers share their latest thoughts and activities with their friends, Lee said.

Pricing and availability of these services has not yet been decided by SK Telecom, he said.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/...ngphone_1.html


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Will Canada Salute The Broadcast Flag?
Michael Geist

My latest Toronto Star Law Bytes column assesses recent comments from an Industry Canada official that Canada is likely to move quickly to import the broadcast flag by July 2005. The column argues that it is essential that Canada craft its own policy by considering the privacy and copyright policies associated with the proposal. Pre-judging the issue is a dangerous course of action and one that should be replaced immediately by a working group consisting of all stakeholders, including the broader public interest.
http://geistcanadabroadcastflag.notlong.com


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Court Rules Music 'Sampling' May Violate Anti-Piracy Law

NASHVILLE, Tenn. A federal appeals court says a rap song that digitally samples George Clinton and the Funkadelic may violate music copyright laws and anti-piracy laws.

The decision released today by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati reverses a lower court's ruling that the sample was too unrecognizable to be a violation.At issue is a three-note guitar riff at the beginning of Clinton's song that was used in a newer rap song called "100 Miles and Runnin."A two-second sample from the riff was copied for the rap song, the pitch was lowered and the copied piece was "looped" and extended to 16 bets. The sample appears in five places during the new song.No Limit Films argued that the sample was not protected by copyright law because it was not "original," and that the sample was legally insubstantial and did not amount to actionable copying under copyright laws.The case is one of at least 800 lawsuits filed in Nashville over lifting snippets of music from older recordings for new music.
http://www.wkrn.com/Global/story.asp?S=2269116


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Disney Loses Song Challenge
From correspondents in Johannesburg

US entertainment giant Walt Disney today lost its court bid to set aside a lawsuit filed by a local Zulu family in South Africa for royalties from the hit song The Lion Sleeps Tonight.

The family of the late Solomon Linda, who composed the original Zulu tune for the song, is claiming 10 million rand (about $2.17 million) in damages from Disney.

Although many productions have used the hit song, Disney has been identified as the "most active user" of the song, including the 1994 blockbuster film The Lion King and spin-off musicals.

Pretoria High Court judge Hekkie Daniels today dismissed Disney's urgent application to cancel a court order that its trademarks in South Africa can be sold to collect damage money.

A total of 240 trade marks, including Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, were cited in the order by a South African court handed down on June 29.

The entertainment company's lawyers said the appointment of an executor for the Linda estate's was invalid, that Disney did not infringe on the copyright of his estate and that the executor failed to disclose "material facts" to the court.

This included a claim that Linda's late wife Regina and his daughters had assigned their rights to the song and received royalties in 1983 and 1992.

Linda, who died with less than $US25 ($36) in his bank account in 1962, was a Zulu migrant worker and entertainer who composed the song Mbube (lion) in Johannesburg in 1939 and recorded it with a singing group called the Evening Birds.

Folk singer Pete Seeger came across the song in New York in 1949, transcribed it note for note and called it Wimoweh, from the Zulu uyiMbube, which means he is a lion.

In 1961, the Tokens recorded the song and added the English lyrics starting with "In the jungle, the mighty jungle".

Since then, the song has been recorded by more than 150 different artists and features in at least 15 movies and stage musicals. It has been translated into several languages including French, Japanese, Danish and Spanish.
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/com...5E1702,00.html


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Mitnick Movie Comes To The US
Kevin Poulsen

Nearly six years after it was filmed, Hollywood's trouble-plagued movie version of the hunt for hacker Kevin Mitnick is headed for video stores in the US

Originally titled Takedown, then Cybertraque, the film is set for a September 28th U.S. release on DVD with the new title, Track Down.

The movie is from Miramax's horror and sci-fi label Dimension Films, and is based on the book Takedown: The Pursuit and Capture of America's Most Wanted Computer Outlaw - By The Man Who Did It, authored by computer scientist Tsutomu Shimomura and New York Times reporter John Markoff.

Shimomura electronically tracked Mitnick to his Raleigh, North Carolina hideout in February, 1995, and sold the book and movie rights for an undisclosed sum amidst the storm of publicity following the fugitive hacker's arrest.

Early versions of the screenplay for the movie adaptation of Takedown cast Mitnick - played by Scream star Skeet Ulrich - as violent and potentially homicidal. In July, 1998, supporters of the then-imprisoned cyberpunk rallied against the film outside Miramax's New York City offices. Writers later revised the script, and shooting wrapped on the project in December, 1998.

The film then languished without a US release date amid rumors of poor test screenings and a re-shot ending. Perhaps hoping to recoup some of their losses, Miramax finally released the movie to French theatres in March, 2000, as Cybertraque. It was generally panned by critics: a reviewer for the newspaper Le Monde noted the film's problems in translating a virtual manhunt to the action- adventure genre. "Can the repeated image of faces sweating over keyboards renew the principles of the Hollywood thriller?," the paper asked. "It's easy to say that the filmmaker hardly reaches that point, regardless of his saturation of the soundtrack with rock music to defeat the boredom of the viewer."

Cybertraque was later released in Europe on DVD with French subtitles, and enjoyed some underground circulation on peer-to-peer networks, often misidentified as the sequel to the 1995 film Hackers.

The real-life Mitnick cracked computers at cellphone companies, universities and ISPs. He pleaded guilty in March, 1999, to seven felonies, and was released from prison on 21 January, 2000, after nearly five years in custody.

Now a security consultant and author, the ex-hacker says he's not happy to see the movie come to America. "I didn't expect the film would ever be released to the US, so this is kind of shock to me," he says. "I'm kind of disappointed because the film depicts me doing things that are not real."

The fictionalized plot of Track Down centers around Shimomura's efforts to capture Mitnick before the hacker can access a terrifying computer program capable of causing blackouts, disabling hospital equipment and scrambling air traffic control systems. Hollywood's Mitnick character is portrayed somewhat sympathetically, but is prone to random outbursts of rage, and suffers a creepy penchant for electronic eavesdropping and a lurking hatred of women.

"You wouldn't believe the amount of emails I get from all around the world saying, 'I saw this movie about you, it's great, you're my hero, it was a fantastic movie,'" says Mitnick. "I'm thinking, these guys are a little bit off... It's not an interesting film. I think it was done pretty poorly."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09...nick_movie_us/
















Until next week,

- js.














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